[Music] TAMU taking America by storm with millions of products for a fraction of retail prices experts predict one in five purchases this holiday season will be made on Chinese shopping apps like temu tempted by $29 running shoes or a $14 Smartwatch my NBC News colleagues and I tried six different products the total brand name retail price for all these items more than 1,000 bucks the price we paid for temu versions 180 this is the or ring and this is the smart ring makeup artist Madison Bermudez wakes up at 4:30 every morning so she spent $300
on the aura ring to track her sleep exercise and health she compared it with the $16 version from temu which included basic step and sleep tracking it is consistent with the aura ring data it's not telling you as much as the AA ring is telling you but it gets some of those basic numbers done we didn't get the same reaction from associate producer Caroline Joyce who tried U's $14 smart watch the product was very glitchy there were tons of ads and my step count was over 5,000 off these $29 running shoes look a lot like
sakon's $275 endorphin Elite shoes correspondent Brian Chung laced up and took them for a 5K run the sole is so stiff and you really want a lot more cushion in a running shoe if you're doing longer distances or maybe even training for a race like I would not recommend these I gave the juicer a spin at $34 it's comparable to a $60 one well that was loud the motor was powerful and it delivered a delicious beet juice no complaints for me next a $29 hair tool similar to the $570 Dyson air rout we tried it
out on NBC News Now anchor Savannah sellers is a lot louder it also gets a lot hotter too hair stylist Gina De pentima noticed while they both have similar attachments the quality is different with the round brushes they're about the same size but the actual Dyson the bristles are a little bit softer she compared them on multiple hair types she did one side of Savannah's hair with each tool the temo curls didn't last as long but Gina says for the price it performed well it's been about half an hour and my director just said one
side is looking 70s and one side is looking 80s finally our biggest investment the espresso machine at $63 producer Khloe L says it took her several attempts to get the machine to work it's definitely a little water d and a little bit more sour but she said it sputtered and became alarmingly hot the machine is still really hot coffee is everywhere Mark spoonauer is the editorinchief of Tom's guide they report on durability and safety test for electronic products what's your advice to people when they're buying specifically Electronics on a site like Teemu if it isn't
a name brand um be wary shopping on teu is a lot like a scratch off lottery ticket there's a lot of excitement when you first buy it it's very cheap and sometimes you're a winner and sometimes you're not he recommends buying home decor and fashion over Tech or gadgets and he says avoid products that must stay plugged in you never know what could happen temu told us its Smartwatch step counts and sleep tracking were within the margin of error that the espresso machine got hot because of a preheating function and that it has suspended the
running shoes from sale okay so well what if you find something in any of number of those things happen can you return are they go about return you absolutely can and they are our experts recommend keeping the barcode at least if you're not going to keep the packaging for the items overall initially three out of the six products we tried performed as promise but now that number's dropped to two to six because this smart ring that Madison tried it stopped tracking her sleep two weeks in so that's the thing sometimes these things look good and
on first blush they work but then other times they just don't and then you know for example you buy something like these headphones you can't really try them on so they end up being smaller perhaps than you think or lighter weight the materials aren't what you expect or they promise features that they don't always have and so that's why you want to be careful and cautious about what you buy Electronics seems like not the right thing yeah that's what our expert Mark spoonauer said he recommends look if it's fashion it's home decor maybe you're buying
some containers to store your shoes in those things are fine something that has to stay plugged in or is electronic relies on batteries that's where you might want to give it a little bit of pause okay so if it seems to be too good to be true it probably is and even if you can return it who wants to take the time it's very wasteful to get these electronic products and find out maybe they're not working as you intended so maybe save up and buy the item that you really want because you know it's going
to last you'll have a warranty it'll be a little easier to get it fixed okay cool all right Micky thank you thank you hey thanks for watching don't miss the Today show every weekday at 11:00 a.m. eastern 8 Pacific on our streaming Channel today all day to watch head to today.com allay or click the link right here
